Soulless Candidates Battle for the Soul of the GOP?

A two-man race? Gingrich and Romney mano-a-mano

While the fight for the Republican Party nomination seems to have crystallized, congealed or coagulated into a highly personal blood-match between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, it can also be seen as the continuation of a struggle that has rocked the GOP for the last fifty years. The Republican Party has not been truly united since the days of the paternalistic and ideologically neutral Eisenhower administration. After Eisenhower, the rift became evident as the Liberal and Conservative wings clashed, and their standard-bearers battled for supremacy.

In the early 1960s, Conservatives rallied around Barry Goldwater to challenge the Liberals who favored Nelson Rockefeller. Goldwater won the nomination in 1964, but suffered an horrendous general election defeat which so split the party that it retreated to what it viewed as a safe choice, 1960’s failed candidate, former Vice President Richard Nixon, who had lost to John F. Kennedy by a mere 100,000 votes in an election that was probably stolen by Democrats in Chicago.

Nixon was a consensus choice, who, Conservative in his tough-on-Commies history, was able to reassure enough Liberals that he would govern progressively. In fact, despite his determination to prosecute the Viet Nam War until we could achieve “peace with honor,” Nixon was quite progressive in establishing the EPA, waging the war on cancer and enforcing wage and price controls in a failed New Deal-esque attempt to combat inflation. His “Better Dead Than Red” street cred allowed him to negotiate progressively with the Soviet Union on an ICBM treaty, hug Leonid Brezhnev in public and, of course, “only Nixon could go to China.” His détente with the Soviet Union drew intense criticism from the Conservative wing, whose standard bearer was now California governor Ronald Reagan.

As the hounds gathered to force Nixon from office, he appointed moderate Gerald R. Ford to replace Spiro “Nolo Contendere” Agnew. Ford, after his elevation to the Oval Office, appointed Nelson Rockefeller as his V.P., setting the stage for a challenge from the Conservative wing. Ronald Reagan challenged Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976, all the way to the convention. But the Liberal wing triumphed, though Conservatives were tossed a bone, as Sen. Bob Dole assumed Rockefeller’s V.P. slot on the ticket. Thus the Republicans ran a bland moderate, unfairly tainted by the lingering odor of Watergate, against a fresh-faced demagogue with a toothy smile and a flimsy resume.

Ford’s 1976 defeat created an opportunity for Conservatives in 1980 to put forth a candidate who could draw broad distinctions between Republican and Democratic Party visions of America. When given a clear choice between a hopeful Conservative and a malaiseful Liberal, voters chose the candidate and the program that promised American resurgence.

After Reagan, the GOP defaulted, as it often does, to the “next guy in line,” Vice President George H. W. Bush. While this seemed on the superficial level to offer continuity, it was actually an ideological reversal, back to the Liberal wing of the Republican Party. Though he lambasted his opponent Michael Dukakis, tarring him with the “Liberal” label, which Reaganism had turned into a dirty word, Bush himself was every bit a Progressive. His admitted trouble with “the vision thing” prevented him from continuing with Reagan’s unfinished work: shrinking government, eliminating overreaching federal departments and returning power to the states. Though Bush was engaged on economics on the macro level, mixing comfortably with the G-8 and captains of worldwide industry, he seemed out of touch with how policy might impact working folks whom Reagan had brought into the Party. Bush 41’s mesmerized reaction to a grocery scanner spoke volumes about his distance from Main Street.

Where Reagan had been militarily decisive, bloodying the noses of tyrants who challenged America’s might, Bush 41 was militarily adventurous, deploying American troops to settle a regional conflict in far off Arabia. He seemed over-eager to shed the “Wimp” label that had been erroneously affixed to him, and while Desert Shield/Storm may have been a move worthy of Republican Progressive Teddy Roosevelt, it was hardly a Conservative use of American might to carry water for Saudi royals, who should have been fully capable of defending their borders from Saddam Hussein. Bush’s final act of Conservative apostasy, raising taxes after promising not to, led to his defeat in a three-way race.

Conservatives continued to wander in the wilderness, with neither the young and handsome misspeller of vegetables, Dan Quayle, nor former AFL quarterback Jack Kemp able to get enough traction to eclipse “next guy in line,” Bob Dole. By election year 2000, the Bushes were back, repackaging themselves as “Compassionate Conservatives.” This questionable “improvement” over the Reagan version seemed at first to be nothing more than a pithy reworking of the elder Bush’s “thousand points of light,” which never succeeded in illuminating the path his presidency would follow.

What became apparent when George W. Bush took office was that “compassionate Conservatism” was more Republican progressivism, which would include military adventurism, expensive and exhaustive nation-building, and expanded, unaffordable and ineffective social programs ranging from No Child Left Behind to S-CHIP to Medicare prescription drug benefits, coupled with additional weighty regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley. On the whole, his administration skewed toward the worst excesses of TR and FDR and could hardly be called conservative, despite tax reform and an unflinching commitment to winning the war in Iraq.

Now, four years after running a Progressive in (tattered) Conservative clothing, who would be “acceptable to independents,” the GOP finds itself lining up the circular firing squad to choose a nominee. As the Bushes before them, all the candidates, regardless of record or core belief, are giving lip-service to being Conservatives and claim to have Conservative backing. Those “Conservative” backers, like the elder Bush, whose policies land them in the Rockefeller Liberal camp, favor “Massachusetts Moderate” Mitt Romney. Like the elder Bush, Romney’s had trouble with “the vision thing,” but professes to have settled on Conservatism. Romney seems to confirm Winston Churchill’s opinion of Americans as people who can always be trusted to do they right thing, after they’ve exhausted all other alternatives. Asking Republicans to accept the roaming Romney as a Conservative is a bit like asking an Evangelical to put his faith in evolution. Backers of Romney tout his “electability,” an odd forte for a politician who’s been beaten three times consecutively. (I, perhaps unfairly, count Romney’s demurer on a 2d term as MA governor as a defeat, “handwriting on the wall” and all that.) Romney wants to appear Reaganesque, but his roots are clearly in the old Rockefeller wing, and his debate skills more reminiscent of a flabbergasted 41 than a peeved Reagan taking command by asserting, “I am paying for this microphone.”

The current “Conservative” standard-bearer, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is getting Tea Party backing, and applause for his willingness to bloody the noses of Left-leaning journalists. Yet Gingrich’s commitment to Conservative principles as etched into the Conservative canon by William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan is highly questionable, and his mercurial and volcanic temperament is off-putting in a way that Reagan at his most irate never was. Gingrich’s Grinchy persona while negotiating Welfare Reform with the Clinton White House was a heavy impetus for G. W. Bush to repackage Conservatism as “compassionate.” That smiley face wrecked havoc on the federal budget, but the question remains, can a Conservative be elected without a smiley face, especially against the toothy Obama?

Trailing Mr. Gingrich is Rick Santorum, who we learned this week was the real winner of the Iowa caucuses. Though I appreciate Senator Santorum’s commitment to life issues and respect his knowledge of foreign policy, he still strikes me as a sophomore sneaking into the Senior Prom wearing his dad’s tuxedo. The moment as yet seems too big for him.

From the standpoint of this spectator, the proxy battle between opposing wings of the GOP pits one flawed candidate against another in an ugly cage match which is doing nothing to elucidate how each might govern. The electorate, who care deeply about the direction of the country, deserve better than to be represented by a hollow mannequin or a blustering egomaniac. If this election is a battle for the soul of America, it is vital to have a battler with a soul.

Tags: Compassionate conservatie, Debate, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, nomination, Rick Santorum, Ronald Reagan

This entry was posted on January 21, 2012 at 11:13 am and is filed under Elections, GOP, Kevin Rush, Republican, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.